New Plants for Florida: Stone Fruit¹

Wayne Sherman²

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Peach, nectarine, plum, apricot and cherry are called "stone fruit" because of their central hard pit. Because of Florida's warm climate, breeding programs for stone fruit have focused on developing “low-chill” varieties – those that can grow and produce fruit with very few hours of chilling or cold weather in the winter. Florida's low-chill stone fruit breeding program was initiated in the early 1950s and has succeeded thanks to two plant breeders, Ralph Sharpe and Wayne Sherman.

Peach

FAES peach breeding began with southern China varieties that had been imported originally into South Carolina, Hawaii, and Okinawa. These were crossed with the best commercial genotypes from the USDA in Ft. Valley, Georgia, and then they were backcrossed to provide the melting flesh (soft flesh) varieties upon which the low-chill industry was founded. Recent work has focused on the development of firm flesh (nonmelting) fruit for the fresh market. Nonmelting flesh peach was introduced as seed and pollen from Mexico (1969), North Carolina (1972), and Brazil (1982). Semifreestone, low-chilling genotypes also have been obtained from these three sources. Breeding has continued to select for early ripening and for elimination of the undesirable characteristics associated with nonmelting flesh, such as long fruit development period, high chill requirements, lack of red skin, off flavor, and low aroma. Since nonmelting flesh fruit is allowed to ripen on the trees, more improvements to flavor, skin color, and shape were made. Advances in tree structure, resistance to bacterial spot and leaf rust, and development of an ornamental flowering tree and novel fruit types also have been successful.

Nectarine

Nectarine is actually a waxy-skin peach. A nectarine is obtained when a single gene change causes the absence of fuzz on the skin. Nectarine varieties for Florida have been developed in the peach breeding program.

Plum

Subtropical plum varieties were developed by crossing a low-chill Japanese plum from Taiwan with high-chill genotypes at USDA, Byron, Georgia. Because of self-incompatibility, they were carried through 5 polycross generations to produce the Gulf series of varieties.

Apricot

The search for a subtropical apricot has centered on a low-chill variety from Thailand [(P. mume Sieb. & Zucc. x apricot) F2], which produced two selections that were open pollinated and backcrossed again to apricot. These seedlings produced the first home garden apricot genotypes in 2002.

Cherry

Development of a subtropical sweet cherry is less promising than that of the other stone fruits, but a low-chill selection of interspecific hybridization has been crossed with sweet cherry and the resulting seedlings may produce a home garden variety.

For more information about stone fruit varieties, see the following EDIS publications:

Cir 1221 Deciduous Fruit for Central Florida

Cir 611 Deciduous Fruit for North Florida

SS-HS-504 Nursery List for Deciduous Fruit Trees

HS 765 Sustainablility Assessment of Fruit Crops for North and North Central Florida

HS 23 Dooryard Fruit Varieties

Tables

Table 1.

Stone fruit varieties produced by FAES.

Fruit	Variety	Date of Release
Peach	Flordaking	1978
	Flordaprince	1982
	TropicBeauty	1986
	Flordacrest	1988
	Gulfprince	1999
	UF-2000	2000
	UFO	2002
Nectarine	Sunhome (red ornamental)	1985
	Sunraycer	1993
	UF Queen	1998
	Sunmist	1994
	Sunbest	2001
Plum	Gulfblaze, Gulfbeauty	1997
	Gulfrose	2000

Footnotes

This document is part of Circular 1440, a publication of the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, the Agronomy Department and IFAS Communication Services, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Publication date August 2003. Originally pubished as a booklet by IFAS Communication Services June 2003. Visit the EDIS Web Site at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu.

Wayne Sherman, Professor, Horticultural Sciences Department. Circular 1440 is edited by Richard L. Jones, Mary L. Duryea, and Berry J. Treat, Florida Agricultural Experiment Station. Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.

Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Richard L. Jones, Dean for Research, publishes this information to further programs and related activities, available to all persons regardless of race, color, age, sex, disability or national origin. Information about alternate formats is available from IFAS Communication Services, University of Florida, PO Box 110810, Gainesville, FL 32611-0810.

The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) is an Equal Opportunity Institution authorized to provide research, educational information and other services only to individuals and institutions that function with non-discrimination with respect to race, creed, color, religion, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, political opinions or affiliations. For more information on obtaining other extension publications, contact your county Cooperative Extension service.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida, IFAS, Florida A. & M. University Cooperative Extension Program, and Boards of County Commissioners Cooperating. Millie Ferrer-Chancy, Interim Dean.

New Plants for Florida: Stone Fruit1